Concerning Cats.
Cat. Irish, Cat; French, Chat; Dutch, Kat; Danish, Kat; Swedish, Katt; German, Katti or Katze; Latin, Catus; Italian, Gatto; Portuguese and Spanish, Gato; Polish, Kot; Russian, Kots; Turkish, Keti; Welsh, Cath; Cornish, Kath; Basque, Catua; Armenian, Gaz or Katz. In Armenic, Kitta, or Kaita, is a male cat.
Abram cat. This I first thought simply meant a male cat; but I find in Nares, "Abram" is the corruption of "auburn," so, no doubt, a red or sandy tabby cat is intended.
A Wheen cat, a Queen cat (Catus femina). "Queen" was used by the Saxons to signify the female sex, in that "queen fugol" was used for "hen fowl." Farmers in Kent and Sussex used also to call heifers "little queens."
Carl cat. A boar or he-cat, from the old Saxon carle or karle, a male, and cat.
Cat. It was used to denote "Liberty." No animal is more impatient of restriction or confinement, nor yet seeming to bear it with more resignation. The Romans made their goddess of Liberty holding a cup in one hand and a broken sceptre in the other, with a cat lying at her feet. Among the goddesses, Diana is said to have assumed the form of a cat. The Egyptians worshipped the cat as an emblem of the moon, not only because it was more active after sunset, but from the dilation and contraction of its orb, symbolical of the waxing and waning of the night goddess. But Bailey, in his dictionary, says cats see best as the sun approaches, and that their eyesight decays as it goes down in the evening. Yet, "on this account," says Mr. Thiselton Dyer, in his "English Folk-lore," "it was so highly esteemed as to receive sacrifices, and even to have stately temples erected to its honour. Whenever a cat died, Brand tells us, all the family shaved their eyebrows; and Diodorus Siculus relates that a Roman happening accidentally to kill a cat, the mob immediately gathered round the house where he was, and neither the entreaties of some principal men by the king, nor the fear of the Romans, with whom the Egyptians were then negotiating a peace, could save the man's life. In so much esteem also was it held, that on the death of its owner the favourite cat, or even kitten, was sacrificed, embalmed, and placed in the same sarcophagus."
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